by Jer
(WARNING: This week's installment of the Drain has less to do with general things that most care about and more to do with specific things that few care about. That's my convoluted way of saying I'm about to get personal and it may bore the live'n hell out of ya.)
"...real fathers, at least at Tom's house, clean guns while watching television, weed-eat the lawn with one hand while holding a beer in the other, and squeeze their wife's butt in the kitchen while she is cooking dinner." - Don Miller from To Own a Dragon.
For those unfamiliar with Donald Miller, he's a fairly popular author these days among college students and the 20-something crowd. I recently saw him speak at Cornerstone University in Grand Rapids, Michigan and afterward students where getting their picture taken with him as if he were a celebrity. I suppose in certain circles, that's exactly what he is. The book that's gotten him the most attention is Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality. It wasn't until I briefly met Donald back in 2004 that I first got an idea of just how popular he and his books are.
I was working at Pepperdine University at the time and one of my colleagues, Adam, was good friends with Donald. For whatever reason, he was in town and Adam had arranged it so that our entire staff could go out to lunch with him.
When I was told that we were going to have lunch with Donald Miller, my immediate and audible response was, "Who?" Which was followed by the somewhat condescending, "You don't know who Donald Miller is? You know, the author of 'Blue Like Jazz'."
"Blue like what?"
Ironically, as the person most ignorant about this man, I ended-up sitting right next to him at the restaurant. Not being duly impressed or intimidated, I tried striking up a conversation with the guy. "So Don, I was told that you were an author. Have you written anything I could find on Amazon or something?"
I'll be the first to admit that I'm not the sharpest tool in the drawer, but I've annoyed enough people in my lifetime to know when I've annoyed yet another. Don mumbled something under his breath (perhaps he suggested I find out if Amazon had "How to win friends and influence people") and that was pretty much the end of our exchange for the remainder of the meal.
Later that day I was meeting with a student and somehow the topic of lunch came-up. "Yeah I had lunch today with some author named Donald Miller." Her eyes flared to the size of softballs, "Donald Miller?!? Blue Like Jazz Donald Miller? Oh my gosh, you had lunch with Donald Miller? I LOVE that book."
Maybe I should have gotten his autograph?
Besides missing out on the opportunity to pick the brain of a well-published author, I also missed out on the opportunity to talk and identify with a kindred spirit. You see Donald, like I, grew-up without a dad. Had I known there was some common ground there, perhaps our time together would have gone differently. But I take solace in that his most recent book, To Own a Dragon, is a collection of "reflections on growing up without a father." And an excellent collection of reflections to boot.
Most kids who grew-up without a father were keenly aware of it. How could you not be? We all had friends who were raised by a complete set of parents and for those of us who went without one or the other, we knew right away that our peer's experience was very different from our own. Watching my friends who had dads interact with their fathers was foreign; there was a cultural divide. That might explain why I avoided interacting with my friend's dads. If a buddy of mine had to ask permission to come over to play or to walk to the local 7-11 to buy baseball cards with me, I always encouraged him to ask their mom; who knew what their dad might say?
But most of the fatherless youth usually look back at their childhood with indifference. Coulda been better, coulda been worse. In spite of everything, I think I turned-out okay. Sure, it would have been nice to learn how to tie a tie from someplace other than Cub Scouts or have them in the crowd at a basketball game, but for the most part, no harm, no foul. Cognitively you know exactly what was missing, but emotionally it's difficult to lament the loss of something you don't remember having in the first place or at least didn't have for very long.
Don Miller says it like this:
For me a father is nothing more than a character in a fairy tale. And I know fathers are not like dragons in that fathers actually exist, but I don't remember feeling that a father existed for me. I know they are real people. I have seen them on TV, and sliding their arms around their women in grocery stores, and I have seen them in the malls and in the coffee shops, but these were characters in other people's stories, and I never stopped to question why one of these characters wasn't living in our house. I don't say this out of self-pity, because in a way I don't miss having a father any more than I miss having a dragon.
That's exactly how I used to think. And then I had children of my own.
The process of plugging into how I really felt didn't happen immediately in my journey as a dad. I wasn't reduced to a whimpering mass right there in the birthing room with my wife catching her breath following delivery of our first born. Sweet Lord, why me!?! WHY? WHY? WHY? WHY? Didn't happen like that. Not even close. It was a slow turning; something I didn't recognize in myself until months after the birth of my third child and even then I was just seeing a shadow of these feelings I had piled under layers of denial or coping mechanisms or whatever headshrinker moniker fits.
I was watching my kids run around the house when I had one of the aforementioned I - turned - out - okay - in - spite - of - a - missing - father thoughts. For whatever reason, it drifted into the thought, "What if my kids had to grow-up without a father?" Externally it caused me to stiffen and to furrow my brow. Internally, the reaction was much more violent and desperate. The thought of them growing-up without a dad actually panicked me.
Let me be clear: It wasn't the thought of me being separated from them that caused this reaction. It wasn't even the thought of something happening to me. It was the specific thought of my kids being raised without a father - any father - that solicited such a fearful reaction. And then the introspection began; emotional math, if you will. If I truly feel fine about being raised without a father, then how do I reconcile that with my feeling a whole hell-of-a-lot-less than fine with just the thought of my kids going without?
From the outside looking in, that may seem like an obvious question, but with your own emotions, nothing is ever obvious. If I could reduce how was feeling to mathematics, it would have looked like this:
If emotion-A equals emotion-B and emotion-B equals emotion-C, then emotion-A should equal emotion-C... but it didn't.
Confused? Yeah. So was I. And as it turned-out, a little hurt.
To be continued...
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